


i'm yours and that's it, whatever

by mischief7manager



Series: with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Wedding Fluff, Weddings, seriously i cannot emphasize how fluffy this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 12:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6565999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischief7manager/pseuds/mischief7manager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Vax’ildan of Vox Machina asks Keyleth of the Air Ashari to marry him on a warm day in early spring.</p><p>'Wait, what?' she says."</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm yours and that's it, whatever

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know you guys.
> 
> Title from "The Ballad of Love and Hate" by the Avett Brothers, which tumblr user nyahmacphee made a post about being a vaxleth song, and which I since cried listening to an uncomfortable amount of times. Spoilers through episode 45.

Vax’ildan of Vox Machina weds Keyleth of the Air Ashari on a warm day in early spring. 

That’s not how the story begins, of course. The beginning of the story is in a dark doorway on a dark night after a dark day in a Keep that has taken a beating, or under a tree in a town that is tasting freedom for the first time in half a decade, or on the street walking to a particularly fancy club in the breath between a question and an answer. The beginning of the story is in a room still echoing with the hoarse cry of a lone raven, or in the bloody muck of a rain-drenched battle with the faint smell of singed flesh just starting to fade, or in the last thoughts of a dying man as he expires on the grass. The beginning of the story is in a chamber in Whitestone Castle in the aftermath of yet another brush with death, or in a cavern in the Underdark in a tense moment of lost faith, or in a small swamp town at the start of an otherwise unremarkable job. Or perhaps, the story begins like this:

Vax’ildan of Vox Machina asks Keyleth of the Air Ashari to marry him on a warm day in early spring.

“Wait, what?” she says. 

They’re in a meadow, half an hour or so’s walk outside of Zephra. As second to the Headmaster, Keyleth’s duties often take her afield from the main center of the Air Ashari, and Vax is always happy to accompany her. There’s not much call for daggers here, not like there was when they were proper adventurers, but they both relish the time in each other’s company. Today, they are gathering herbs for potions and poultices. As usually happens, Keyleth has flowers of many kinds and colors in her hair. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether she picked them or simply crafted them from nothingness. They form a lovely frame for her face as she stares wide-eyed at Vax, frozen in being caught off guard.

“Will you marry me?” he repeats. The question has run through his mind a lot, recently. It’s been nearly two years since the disbanding of Vox Machina, since Keyleth returned to her people and Vax went with her. It’s a different life than he could ever have predicted for himself, here with the Ashari. It’s settled, and simple, with only the rare band of orcs or flare of activity from the portal to the elemental plane to disturb the day-to-day routine. In her last letter, Vex had called him “disgustingly domesticated,” and the label is not inaccurate. Vax is at peace here, in a way he has never known, not for as long as he’s been old enough to remember. He’s building a life here, with Keyleth, and he’d like to make it permanent, make it known.

Keyleth looks less certain than he feels, however. “Um,” she says, tucking a strand of copper hair behind one ear. “I thought I already had?” 

Vax blinks. “What?”

Keyleth blinks back at him. “What, what?” She puts down the basket of herbs, facing him fully in the afternoon sun. “We’ve lived together for over a year. What did you think was happening?”

Vax flushes. “I thought we were- living together, I didn’t think that meant we were  _ married. _ ”

Keyleth frowns. “Oh. It does, though. At least, with the Ashari, when a couple lives under the same roof, and sleeps in the same bed, and, you know-” she waves a hand, “ _ lives _ together, all that stuff, it means they’re married. I thought you knew.”

“No,” Vax says. “I was not aware that I was married.” He sits down in the grass with a thud. 

Married. For the past year, without even knowing it, Vax has been  _ married. _

Vex is gonna kill him.

Keyleth sits in front of him, slowly, like she’s approaching a wounded animal. “How do other people do it? Get married, I mean.” She crosses her legs and plants her elbows on her knees, resting her chin against her hands. It’s a familiar pose, not unlike her meditation posture, one that he knows means she is fully focused on whatever’s in front of her. Not for the first time, Vax wonders what he did to deserve being the subject of that focus.

He shrugs. “I’m not really sure, to be honest.” It’s true. No one Vax knows has ever gotten married before. The little he knows of weddings is taken from seeing them in passing, in temples or market squares, back when he and Vex were wandering after leaving Singorn. A wedding was a target-rich environment for a rogue-in-training with sticky fingers, plenty of people well on their way to drunk and too busy congratulating each other to check their pockets. He’d been to quite a few, but his focus was always on the objects of his thievery, not the ceremonies themselves. 

“I know there’s a cleric,” he says. “There’s a priest of someone, usually, to get the blessing of the gods. And vows. The people getting married, they say some things about how they’re going to do right by each other, how they’re binding themselves together for the rest of their lives.”

Keyleth’s face brightens. “That sounds like a handfasting!” Off Vax’s confused head-tilt, she continues. “It’s a druid thing we do, when a couple wants to show their commitment to each other. It’s usually a formality, but-” she shrugs. “Why not?”

Vax sits up. “Alright,” he says. “Alright. What do we have to do?” He grins. There’s a plan now, and while Vax has not, historically, been the best at following plans, he trusts Keyleth. He’s always trusted Keyleth. And he  _ wants _ this, to show her how much she means to him. Not that he thinks she doesn’t already know it; they’ve been together long enough, even before they were a couple, to have seen the best and worst of each other. She sees his love for her every morning when she wakes and every night when she falls asleep, he’s made sure of it. But having something- not official, but tangible, putting into words once and for all his devotion to her… The idea has its appeal. 

“We just need…” Keyleth stands up and runs over to her basket, digging through the herbs and flowers for the small bag she always carries with her when they go out. It’s no Bag of Holding, but it has the essentials. With a cry of triumph, she pulls out a strand of wide blue ribbon. One of the men of the Ashari has been teaching Keyleth to sew, and she’s taken to carrying needle, thread, and other such things with her at all times, practicing whenever she gets a moment. Vax loves watching her work, loves seeing this woman who can literally move heavens and earth make slow, careful stitches in a scrap of fabric, tongue poking out between her teeth in concentration. Loves the look of triumph on her face when she succeeds. 

Keyleth runs back and stretches out a hand to him, fingers wiggling impatiently. He takes it and lets her pull him to his feet. “Okay,” she says, her shoulders set with the certainty of a plan, “so basically we just need this-” she holds up the ribbon, “and I guess the vows? That’s kind of like what happens in a handfasting.” She smiles at him, wide. “Do you want to go first?”

Vax blinks. “Now? There’s no one here.”

Keyleth grins. “So? Everyone in the Ashari already thinks we’re married.” At Vax’s hesitation, she squeezes his hand. “We don’t have to, and we can do something later, once we’ve sent out letters and gotten Vex and the rest here, but…” She trails off, fiddling with the ribbon between her fingers. “This is really just for us, isn’t it? So we can have this moment to remember, when things are… hard. So we have something to point to for why we’re together. Why we want to be together. So we’ll always have that memory, even when...”

She trails off. Neither of them says it, but the weight of Keyleth’s immortality hangs in the air between them. Keyleth keeps her eyes on the ribbon in her hand until Vax speaks.

“Alright,” he says. She meets his gaze, and he smiles. “But I think you should go first.” He bumps his shoulder against hers. “Show me how it’s done.” 

A smile flits across Keyleth’s face, just for a moment, before she straightens, and her expression settles into something more… not serious. Solemn, perhaps. The expression she wears during Ashari ceremonies of great significance, or whenever something is happening that she considers to be important. Her left hand she leaves entwined with Vax’s right. Her other, she uses to loop the ribbon over and around her left wrist. 

As she does, she speaks. “Vax,” she says, her voice soft, then pauses. Shakes her head, huffs out a laugh. “I don’t even know what to say,” she admits. She looks up to meet his gaze, eyes full of emotion he never thought he’d see directed at him. “I’m not good at the whole talking thing.” Vax chuckles, and that seems to give her some kind of confidence, because she stands a little straighter as she continues. “But you know that. You know all of the things I’m not good at, and the things I am. You know that I am awkward, and I don’t think things through sometimes, and I kick in my sleep.” She smiles. “And you know I love you. And I know you love me.” She squeezes Vax’s hand. “So I swear to you, Vax’ildan, that I will love you, and support you, and be by your side for whatever craziness life throws at us…” Keyleth raises her free hand to cup Vax’s cheek. 

“I will love you,” she says, “until the day I die.” 

Vax freezes. He stares at Keyleth for a moment. No matter how many times Keyleth told him she loved him, there was a small voice inside his heart that told him it wasn’t true. Or if it was, it was temporary. It was a fleeting thing, and soon he would be alone again. And Vax had ignored it, pushed it down with all of the other shitty things he didn’t want to look at too closely, with the voices that told him he didn’t deserve this happiness, that told him everything he touched turned to ash and smoke, that told him he couldn’t trust himself with something, someone so beautiful and good. Vax still has trouble trusting himself.

But Vax trusts Keyleth. 

He covers her hand with his own, turns his head to press a kiss to the center of her palm. If she notices that his eyes are shining as he takes the ribbon from her and prepares to speak, she doesn’t react, other than to hold his hand all the tighter.

Vax begins winding the ribbon around his right wrist now, the mirror to what he saw her do. “Keyleth,” he says. “I told you once I was yours, if you’d have me.” His heart still races at the memory of that moment, under the Sun Tree, the freedom of laying himself bare for her. “I’m yours,” he says now, his fingers laced with hers, their wrists wrapped in ribbon, a warm spring breeze lifting the hair around his face. “For as long as you’ll have me, for as long as I live.” Keyleth’s eyes begin to well, and he raises their entwined fingers to kiss the back of her hand. “I’m yours,” he swears. 

Keyleth nods, and takes the ribbon back from him, wrapping it around both of their hands. “I now take you, Vax’ildan, to be my husband.” After a moment, she nudges Vax. “Now you,” she says, eyes wide with mock seriousness.

Vax smiles. “I now take you, Keyleth,” he says, laughter bubbling up inside his chest, “to be my wife.” And then he does laugh out loud. “For real this time.” 

Keyleth giggles, remembering, as he is, their awkward conversation on the hunt for the Slayer’s Take in Vasselheim so long, long ago. “For real this time,” she agrees, then sobers, her giggles subsiding into a soft, tender smile. 

“And now we’re married,” she says.

Vax looks down at their hands, now almost invisible beneath layers of blue ribbon. “That’s it?” he says, not quite believing that something so monumental could be so simple.

Keyleth grins. “Well, there is one more tradition.” And she puts a hand on the back of his neck to pull him to her for a kiss.

On another warm day in early spring, exactly a year and a day after this one, they will repeat the ceremony. There will be more words, better rehearsed, in front of their friends and family. Scanlan will cry, although he will deny it when pressed. Pike will give them Sarenrae’s blessing, filling the clearing with golden light. Grog will be in charge of flowers, and will scatter petals with great fervor. Percy will say very little, but he will smile the entire time. Trinket will lick his uncle and aunt’s faces enthusiastically, utterly destroying the simple braids that Keyleth made in their hair. Vex will hug her brother fiercely, and say in a voice just loud enough for him to hear that their mother would be so proud of him. Everyone present will remember it as one of the happiest, most beautiful days of their lives.

But for Vax and Keyleth, in this moment, standing in this clearing, kissing like a promise, like they have all the time in the world, they can be no happier day than this. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sappiest, grossest, fluffiest thing I have ever written and I have zero (0) regrets.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] i'm yours and that's it, whatever](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12118083) by [Jadesfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire)




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